Mary Chapin Carpenter finds her Miracle’

Monday

Three years ago, Mary Chapin Carpenter’s life – not to mention her music career – was thrown into question when she suffered a pulmonary embolism.

Three years ago, Mary Chapin Carpenter’s life – not to mention her music career – was thrown into question when she suffered a pulmonary embolism.

Today, she is reticent to discuss the embolism or what she went through in regaining her health.

“It’s not something I want to talk about,” Carpenter said. “I’d rather just talk about what I’m doing now.”

The fact that Carpenter has new music (“The Age of Miracles”) and a summer tour to talk about is great news.

And Carpenter can’t be faulted for not wanting to discuss that health scare. It’s in the past, and she knows it does her no good to look back.

“I don’t want to dwell on it a lot,” she said. “I just want to get back to doing what I love to do, which is playing music. I don’t mean to be dismissive of it, but it’s not something that’s going to help me to dwell on it.”

Carpenter pretty much said what she wanted to say on the subject in a column she wrote for NPR radio.

“I tried to express the surprise, I guess, that I felt after getting out of the hospital and sort of realizing the seriousness of everything,” Carpenter said. “I fell into a real funk, and I think that was probably normal, or natural. Looking back on it now, I can see how that all happened. You know, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it.”

In the NPR article, titled “The Learning Curve of Gratitude,” she talked about being home a week after finishing a run of tour dates in 2007 and having serious chest pain and breathlessness that made her hurry to an emergency room. At the hospital, blood clots in her lungs were discovered and Carpenter received the treatment that saved her life.

Most of the article, though, deals with the emotional aftermath of the embolism, beginning with the frustration and guilt Carpenter felt about having to cancel an already-booked tour and having to let her band and road crew go. Then she described a period of time in which she was filled with “anxiety, fear and self-loathing – all of the ingredients of the darkness that is depression.”

Carpenter explained how a simple “have a nice day” comment from a grocery clerk helped get her outlook back on track. The clerk, she wrote, truly meant those oft-spoken words, and it helped her recognize what a gift each day is, and why she should be grateful for all of life’s pleasures.

That revelation helped Carpenter regain her emotional balance and the motivation to write the music fans now hear on “The Age of Miracles.”

That album is a natural successor to recent CDs, such as 2004’s “Between Here and Gone” and 2007’s “The Calling,” that have found Carpenter emphasizing a quieter, more acoustic-centered folk-pop sound than on earlier albums such as 1990s’ “Shooting Straight In The Dark,” 1992’s “Come On, Come On” and 1994’s “Stones in the Road.”

Those three platinum albums elevated Carpenter to stardom, as between 1990 and 1996, she reeled off 15 top-10 singles, including the number one hits “He Think He’ll Keep Her,” “I Take My Chances,” “Shut Up and Kiss Me” and “Down at the Twist and Shout.”

While Carpenter had some of her greatest chart success with uptempo songs (such as “Shut Up and Kiss Me” and “Down at the Twist and Shout”), she has always written her share of ballads – and those songs have often provided her most insightful and meaningful moments as a songwriter. So perhaps it’s only natural that Carpenter’s recent CDs have leaned toward ballads and introspection.

“I don’t think I’ve made a record that’s had those sort of songs (like “Shut Up and Kiss Me” or “Down at the Twist and Shout”) on them for awhile, and it hasn’t really been a conscious thing or a deliberate thing,” Carpenter said, noting she wrote some uptempo material ahead of recording “The Age of Miracles.” “It’s just when you’re in the studio and you’re putting something together, you want to serve the album as a whole. And they (the uptempo songs) would sort of stick out and they wouldn’t feel right, I think, with the rest of the things I was wanting to do. So you know, you follow your muse and you try to just be the artist that you try to be. You just try to be as communicative and substantive as you can.”

“The Age of Miracles” may be Carpenter’s most musically understated work yet. The CD includes one fairly frisky pop gem in “I Put My Ring Back On” and a pair of full-bodied ballads, “The Way I Feel” and “What You Look For.” But otherwise, “The Age of Miracles” is filled predominantly with artfully crafted, smartly worded acoustic ballads about the search for richness and reward in love and life.

The themes on “The Age of Miracles,” Carpenter said, have populated her work throughout her career.

“I just feel like I’ve always written about the sort of search for connection and ultimately the pain of love, but also the benefits and the need for it, and the freedom of travel and the sense of searching that continues to go on in your life,” she said.

The search for understanding, fulfillment and wisdom, she said, never stops, and she’s become more keenly aware of that fact recently.

“Certainly, every part of your life is a period of growth, experimentation, exploration, inspiration,” Carpenter said. “I think the last few years for me have been so difficult, and they’ve really just taken me places I never imagined I’d go. I mean that literally and figuratively. I guess I just feel grateful that I’m still here and still learning. That’s probably the greatest blessing of all.”

Carpenter also is grateful for her life as a musician. She’s excited about her summer tour, in which she will perform with a full band. And while one might expect that after her health ordeal she would appreciate the opportunity to tour more than ever, Carpenter said that’s not necessarily the case.

“When you go out summer after summer, year after year, I think it’s fair to assume that it might become somewhat routine perhaps,” she said. “I’ve never really felt that way. I’ve always felt very anticipatory about tours, especially in the summer when you can really get out and be outside at some of the beautiful venues. It’s a special time. So I don’t feel routine about it. I feel very, very happy about it. I don’t ever want to take it for granted.”

The Patriot Ledger

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